"Darling nothing!" And Sandy, with her protest, would lay a cool cheek against her mother's hot one. "Do you have to stay out here, Mother?" she would ask resentfully. "Can't the Culled Lady do this?" "Well, I left her to watch it, and it burned," Mrs. Salisbury would say, "so now it has to be pared and frosted. Such a bother! But this is the very last thing, dear. You run along; I'll be out of here in two minutes!" But it was always something more than two minutes. Sometimes even Kane Salisbury was led to protest. "Can't we eat less, dear? Or differently? Isn't there some simple way of managing this week-end supper business? Now, Brewer--Brewer manages it awfully well. He has his man set out a big cold roast or two, cheese, and coffee, and a bowlful of salad, and beer. He'll get a fruit pie from the club sometimes, or pastries, or a pot of marmalade--" "Yes, indeed, we must try to simplify," Mrs. Salisbury would agree brightly. But after such a conversation as this she would go over her accounts very soberly indeed. "Roasts--cheeses--fruit pies!" she would say bitterly to herself. "Why is it that a man will spend as much on a single lunch for his friends as a woman is supposed to spend on her table for a whole week, and then ask her what on earth she has done with her money!" "Kane, I wish you would go over my accounts," she said one evening, in desperation. "Just suggest where you would cut down!" Mr. Salisbury ran his eye carelessly over the pages of the little ledger. "Roast beef, two-forty?" he presently read aloud, questioningly. "Twenty-two cents a pound," his wife answered simply. But the man's slight frown deepened. "Too much--too much!" he said, shaking his head. Mrs. Salisbury let him read on a moment, turn a page or two. Then she said, in a dead calm: "Do you think my roasts are too big, Kane?" "Too big? On the contrary," her husband answered briskly, "I like a big roast. Sometimes ours are skimpy-looking before they're even cut!" "Well!" Mrs. Salisbury said triumphantly. Her smile apprised her husband that he was trapped, and he put down the account book in natural irritation. "Well, my dear, it's your problem!" he said unsympathetically, returning to his newspaper. "I run my business, I expect you to run yours! If we can't live on our income, we'll have to move to a cheaper house, that's all, or take Stanford out of school and put him to work. Dickens says somewhere--and he never said a truer thing!" pursued the man of the house comfortably, "that, if you spend a sixpence less than your income every week, you are rich. If you spend a sixpence more, you never may expect to be anything but poor!" Mrs. Salisbury did not answer. She took up her embroidery, whose bright colors blurred and swam together through the tears that came to her eyes.